Get a fresh dose of the news that matters, delivered directly to your inbox, every morning. The perfect way, to get you started and informed, for the day ahead.

File photo of Avani Chaturvedi.

Loading...

Watching the planes fly over her head, little Avani Chaturvedi never thought that her fascination for aircraft would help her break records fifteen years later. All she knew was that she had to make everyone proud like Kalpana Chawla. “Unlike other girls, Avani used to love playing with chopper and plane models. When astronaut Kalpana Chawla died, our 11-year-old daughter told us that one day she would make everyone proud just like the Indian-American,” said an elated Savita Chaturvedi, mother of Flying Officer Avani Chaturvedi. True to her words, the Madhya Pradesh girl became the first Indian woman to fly a fighter jet.

In a major breakthrough, the CBI busted a child pornography racket that was being run via a WhatsApp group with members drawn from various countries. The pornographic content was being uploaded to the group named ‘KidsXXX’. This 199-member WhatsApp group was used to upload and download child pornography across the globe.

Late night arrests of farmer leaders across several states have prevented the big 23 February 'Parliament gherao' rally in the capital. Lakhs of farmers from several states, including Rajasthan, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh, were expected to gather in the capital to highlight their distress. The big farmer rally in Delhi organised by Rashtriya Kisan Mahasangh, an umbrella body of 62 farmer unions across the country, was scheduled to hit the capital on Friday. Farmer bodies had planned to halt traffic at all entry/exit points to the capital and had planned to lay a siege to the Parliament.

Billionaire jeweller Nirav Modi made it clear that he can't appear and depose before the Enforcement Directorate in the Rs 11,400 crore Punjab National Bank scam. In an emailed reply to the ED’s investigating officer, he cited the temporary suspension of his passport and pending business issues as reasons for his non-appearance before the probe agency. Exactly the same reason Vijay Mallya had given.

With elections scheduled to take place this year in Madhya Pradesh, a resurgent Congress is going all-out to unseat the Bharatiya Janata Party which has been in power for the last 15 years in the state. However, sources say the Congress is struggling to put its own house in order as the party is top heavy with many heavyweight leaders vying to lead it in the elections.

Veteran actor Kamal Haasan made every effort to remain ideologically neutral at the launch of his political party Makkal Needhi Maiam, and it was perhaps this attempt that made him take the names of Arvind Kejriwal, Chandrababu Naidu, Pinarayi Vijayan and Barack Obama when asked about the leaders that have been his inspiration. By labelling this unlikely combination of contemporary leaders, who have made a mark for completely disparate ideologies, as his heroes, Haasan took everyone present at the party launch by surprise as people are so used to politicians invoking the names of a Mahatma Gandhi, BR Ambedkar or Periyar.

Shiv Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray said that after the Nirav Modi episode people have become suspicious of banks. Uddhav said that government should take responsibility for people's savings if a bank goes bust. "There is an environment of distrust towards banks these days. People save their hard earned money in banks. We are going to tell government now, that if a bank goes bust, Central and State governments will have to take responsibility of it," he said at a book launch function here.

Agree or disagree?

Even by 21st Century Tamil Nadu’s ‘rationalist’ Dravidian standards, actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan did the unthinkable at the launch of his new political outfit, ‘Makkal Needhi Maiam’ (MNM), which translates to ‘People’s Justice Centre’. In a state where annual temple festivals commence with a formal flag-hoisting at an auspicious hour, always around the crack of dawn, Kamal hoisted the three-colour MNM flag after sunset. Going beyond another ‘political superstition’, yet conforming to demands to pull crowds possibly, Kamal chose the southern temple-city of Madurai for the launch. What, however, stands out more than the ‘white’ in Kamal’s flag — obviously denoting purity in public life than anything else — is the image and imagery of six linked hands, a reflection of Leftist political practice of cooperation and coordination, especially of the labour and farming classes in the country.

If India does not respect its living, it cares even less for its dead. We saw this through a news report the other day, when the body of an aged Selvaraj was transported along with vegetables in a van from the St Joseph Hospices, near Chennai. This seemed like the very last nail in India's conscience -- gone completely astray. In a nation which never fails to talk about its Gandhi, its Buddha and its Mahavir and yet is callous enough to let its rich and reckless get away with murder on the road – where inebriated drivers run their vehicles over sleeping men and where two-wheelers race at scary speeds unmindful of the pedestrians they knock down – it now appears that such inhumanity swallows the dead as well.

(Get a fresh dose of the news that matters, delivered directly to your inbox, every morning. The perfect way, to get you started and informed, for the day ahead. Subscribe to News18 Daybreak here.)